World Travel and Tourism Council - Tourism For Tomorrow Awards

Tourism For Tomorrow Awards

WTTC Tourism for Tomorrow Awards are one of the world's highest accolades in the Travel & Tourism industry and reward the most innovative and best policies in sustainable tourism worldwide.

In 1989, the Awards were founded by the Federation of Tour Operators to encourage action from all sectors of the industry to protect the environment. The Awards were subsequently taken over by British Airways in 1992, and were further developed to encompass all aspects of sustainable tourism, with the explicit aim of leading the industry in this field. WTTC took over the Awards in 2004 and combines the awards ceremony with the World Travel & Tourism Global summit to give the winners a stage to show off their achievements.

The Awards have four categories:

• Community Benefit Award: recognises tourism initiatives that has effectively demonstrated direct benefits to local people, including capacity building, the transfer of industry skills, and support for community development and enhancement and support for cultural heritage in the area..
• Conservation Award: Open to any tourism business, organisation or attraction, including lodges, hotels, or tour operators, able to demonstrate that their tourism development and operations have made a tangible contribution to the conservation of nature. This includes, but is not limited to, the protection of wildlife, expanding and restoring natural habitat, and supporting biodiversity conservation.
• Global Tourism Business Award: Open to any large company from any sector of Travel & Tourism - cruise lines, hotel groups, airlines, tour operators, etc. - with at least 500 full-time employees and operating at least 8 hotel business enterprises in one or more countries, this award recognises best practices in sustainable tourism at a large company level.
• Destination Stewardship Award: This award goes to a destination - country, region, state, or town - which comprises a network of tourism enterprises and organisations which show dedication to and success in maintaining a programme of sustainable tourism management at the destination level, incorporating social, cultural, environmental and economic benefits as well as multi-stakeholder engagement. Applicants may include governments, NGOs, businesses, or community organisations on behalf of the destination.

The awards are judged by 15-20 judges of the highest scholarly and professional backgrounds from within the industry. The judges over the years have together designed a three stage process to decide on the winners of the awards. The judging includes selecting the finalists, on-site evaluation visits and selecting the winners and designed to be integral and transparent so that the success of the awards is due to the every judge being involved in every aspect of the process.

Costas Christ, Chairman of the Judges, WTTC Tourism for Tomorrow Awards believes, 'a measure of a company or tourism destination’s success, is now increasingly tied to their quality of sustainable tourism best practice.' The size of the company should not be an issue when implementing measures such as the standards of guest service from local people, the eco friendly facilities a hotel room has or how locally sourced the food is. Below are the winners from previous years which have excelled in best practice sustainable tourism and stood out from among the rest when they underwent the three stage judging process.